Broken and Hollow
by QueenWolf48
Summary: Baron Von Strucker ran many tests on the Maximoff Twins, including live ones to test their powers. What if one of them died in the course of one of his experiments? *Starts Pre-AoU and continues into and after AoU. Definite cannon divergence. I may also up the rating depending on the direction the story goes in. Feel free to review!
1. Chapter 1

Even before agreeing to Baron Von Strucker's experiments, Pietro and Wanda always had been close. There was a connection between them. As twins they were inseparable. They were never far from each other and could tell when the other was in trouble. They were able to communicate without words with their own separate language of movements and looks that only they could understand. And disagreements rarely happened between them while Wanda was able to temper Pietro's anger and quelled his impulsiveness. They looked out for each other; they didn't need anyone else, only each other. After all, Maximoffs look after their own, after _family_. Pietro and Wanda were the only ones left after the bombing took out their apartment when they were 10. After their 'enhancements' they became even closer, almost one.

With Wanda's power, she was constantly in Pietro's mind, a constant presence, even when he couldn't physically reach or see her, she was there. Her power created a link, a pathway between their minds that he could use to enter her mind or at least talk to her without her having to be completely in his head.

Their connection was so strong that one day, during one of Strucker's tests for them, when she's suddenly gone, _dead_ , it hurts. His mind, _his heart_ , they're both broken now that she's gone. And it hurts so fucking much when she's not there anymore and her power transfers over to him through their fractured bond. Pietro hates Stucker, the scientists, the guards, all of them, in that moment. He wants it to end, wants them _gone._ So much that he strikes back because he can't take it, the pain, _the emptiness_. He keeps moving until someone gets a needle in his neck.

After that he can't remember much of anything. Just passing images of a chair, something made of shining metal, red blood and ... blue eyes? And then he can't remember being more than _just Pietro_. It has been only Pietro since his parents were killed when the bomb struck their apartment when he was 10. There was no one else and there never was. So he grew up on the streets alone and volunteered for Strucker's experiments alone. Pietro was the only one to survive the enhancements, _alone_.

-Line Break-

Occasionally Pietro catches glimpses of a girl in the guards' minds with powers like his. She has better control over the red energy but doesn't seem to unnerve the guards the way he can with the mind reading. And always he's pictured with her and they're close, always close, _together_. Sometimes he feels a pang of something in his mind, like there's some sort of echo or a broken connection there. _Twin_.

Now he can't remember his pain and doesn't know why all of them, the scientists, the guards and even Strucker, fear him so irrationally. It feels like a recent development, as if they're waiting for him to break, _to remember_.

But what? He's unimportant, just Pietro, nothing more. _Hollow, broken and ... forsaken_.


	2. Chapter 2

The facility is under attack. The minds of the guards tell Pietro that their attackers are the Avengers. The Avengers appear like gods in the minds of the guards and the men fear them. Thor actually is a god or at least as close as one can get and Dr. List wishes for Strucker to send him out, to test him against the Avengers. He hears Strucker say he's not ready, _too broken,_ for field testing. Normally a comment like that would bother Pietro but he's distracted. They call him _the Twin_ , almost as if it's supposed to be plural and they're trying hard not to say twins. Did he have a twin? Is that what's missing in his memories when he looks back and thinks something, someone's, missing? Is that who he occasionally glimpses in the minds of everyone around him, the girl? And when he believes the extra power, the red energy and mind reading, doesn't truly belong to him?

It appears that Strucker doesn't care about the attack; Pietro can see in his mind that he'll surrender to the Avengers even after giving the order of no surrender to his men. It seems that Strucker is more afraid of the Avengers than he is of Pietro; they are powerful enough to stop an alien invasion and Captain America alone destroyed Hydra, the organization that used to fund Strucker's work. Pietro sees something else in Strucker's mind though. Someone Strucker fears more than anything. A man? _A ghost?_ He's thrashing in a chair, blue eyes wide and panicked, like he knows what is going to happen to him. That he's going to forget _everything_. It all looks vaguely familiar to Pietro, as if he's seen both the man, _the Soldier_ , and the chair before, actually physically been there in the room too. Has Pietro been in the man's, _the Soldier's_ , position before? Then the same man, _the Soldier_ , takes out a group of 50 or so armed insurgents in their own base. He's silent and deadly, an assassin with the brute strength and training of a warrior to back him up and come out on top every time.

Pietro remembers the man's, _the Soldier's_ , eyes, their haunting emptiness. A thousand yard stare is what most people would call his gaze, like he's looking straight through you and seeing but still not truly seeing anything at the same time. He sees that look in his own eyes now, especially when his memories threaten to overwhelm him with their ... _wrongness_.

Strucker has taken advantage of his emptiness before. Did he used to fight back? Is he complacent now and accepting of his treatment? Pietro feels like he's drifting away from it all and he can't remember how many years it has been since he first arrived at the facility. The scientists' testing and their exams, Strucker's evaluations of his powers, and the vile thoughts that spew from the minds of everyone around him; it all doesn't impact him. _Pietro doesn't care_. Once Strucker brought in a different scientist, a doctor, and in this one's mind he catches the words _dissociative disorder_ and _dissociation_. Is that what he's experiencing? Has Pietro suppressed a part of himself so he no longer feels what is happening to him? He is blank now, dead eyes. All so he can protect himself from the experiments and atrocities forced upon his mind and body, a different one from each person in the facility. There's one scientist that wishes to cut him open just to watch his increased metabolism knit him back together over and over again or the one that wants to crack his chest open to watch his heart beat rapidly while he's pumped full of stimulants and his body struggles to handle the excess energy. Or the guards. They all have some type of sick delusion about him hiding somewhere in their minds, no matter how they treat him. There are ones that are nice or give him things, while others spit at him or call him derogatory names and slurs, others punish him harshly with beatings or other things and the last of them ignore him and what happens to him. At this point, Pietro's vacant mind can't remember if anyone, scientist or guard, has acted on their fantasy towards him and which ones inflicted what scars from the many running all across his body. _He can't find it in his mind to care about any of it_. Often times Pietro wishes he never survived that first injection, _his enhancement_.

Pietro can feel the ground shaking now. The Avengers are closer, almost close enough to for him to see inside their heads. When a guard runs in to report, Pietro feels an old hatred reawaken in him. He knows it's childish to feel this hatred but, when he sees Iron Man in the guard's mind as one of the Avengers, Pietro leaves. He'll take them out himself since Strucker certainly won't. Also Strucker wishes to hide him away from the Avengers, to protect himself and to hide his 'research'. As he goes, he desperately welcomes the hate he is exhibiting. _It's an emotion_. To Pietro feeling hatred towards Tony Stark is better than the blank mind he had before he saw Stark in that guard's mind. His empty consciousness had nothing to grasp or hold onto; one with no hope, _no feeling_. And maybe there is just the slightest spark of fear and apprehension in his mind too. It spurs him on.

But still, something's missing. _You know I'm 12 minutes older than you, right?_ His voice is teasing and light, _happy_. And then there's laughter, bright and clear like bells, and female. _Someone's missing_.

* **Just as a note:** I changed/updated Chapters 1 and 2 so if you haven't read it since Dec. 9th its a little different now, definitely longer.


	3. Chapter 3

***Author's Note: If you haven't read Chapters 1 and 2 since Chapter 3 was uploaded, please do so! I updated them so they're longer and a little different.  
**

The Avengers are formidable. Pietro knows this. He saw them in the guards' minds and in Strucker's mind but that does not prepare him to see them in action. They are … strong, impressive, _intimidating_. They are able to work cohesively, to have each other's backs and to trust each other. Pietro found himself watching them closely feeling as though he had lost something. He felt as if he once had something similar to what the Avengers have together. But he didn't and never had it. He was alone and he always had been.

Hawkeye intrigued Pietro the most out of all the Avengers. The man, _Clint Barton_ , was able to keep up with the rest of them using only a bow and arrow. He also did what he did without enhancements of any kind nor was he a genius like Stark or Banner. He was the most normal of them all, yet perhaps the most important. Barton was their _eyes in the sky_ , the sniper more suited for long range attacks rather than close quarters or hand to hand, and an infiltrator, scout, _assassin_.

Hawkeye was also interesting to Pietro because Pietro could sense his emotions and surface thoughts but nothing more. Everything else was guarded and hidden. It was as if someone had been traipsing in Barton's mind before him and utterly destroyed it, completely taken over him, leaving it broken and vulnerable. And now to protect itself and similar to something the human body would do, _his brain had adapted_. His mind had grown back stronger than before and more resilient to outside forces. It _fascinated_ Pietro, the tenacity of the human mind as demonstrated before him by Barton. However, with Pietro's level of power it would be all too easy for Pietro, if he wished, to brush Barton's mediocre defenses aside and gain access to the deeper levels of his mind.

Something hummed in the background and Pietro reacts before he even realized what he was doing. He rushes toward Hawkeye, knocking him over as a blast of blue energy hit the tree Barton had just been standing in front of. Essentially Pietro had _protected_ Barton from a potentially fatal injury.

"You didn't see that coming?" Pietro asked his voice taunting and accent thick. He slowly circled Barton a few times, watching him recover. Pietro frowned. It looked like he had broken a few of Barton's ribs when he knocked him down. Strangely this fact distressed him. For some reason, _Pietro didn't want to hurt Barton. Pietro sped off after that realization._ He was so confused and that distressed him further.

Laughing albeit hysterically, Pietro caught the arrow Barton shot after him. He waved in Barton's incredulous face before tossing it to the side. Racing away Pietro spared one last look at Hawkeye before something exploded to his right and he refocused on his running.

-Line Break-

Clint had wandered away from the rest of the Avengers to catch any stragglers and take out any outlying outposts he came across when something, _someone_ , slammed into him. He heard the blast of one of the energy cannons the guards liked to use pass over head. The boy, who was now circling him, had pushed him out of the way. Clint winced. It was at the expense of a few broken or cracked ribs but that was better than being hit by one of those energy blasts.

"You didn't see that coming?" The kid was taunting him. He had a Sokovian accent, so he was a local. However, Clint didn't know how he got the super speed. Had Strucker moved onto human enhancements and experiments rather than advanced technology like their intel stated? They knew he had several Chitauri artifacts and specimens and it was rumored he had Loki's scepter. The scepter was the reason the Avengers had shown up to deal with him. Ever since the fall of SHIELD some things had slowly disintegrated without SHIELD influence and the Avengers had been left to pick up the bigger things. Without SHIELD supervision and interference, the Avengers had started to come under scrutiny as they began to work autonomously.

The kid frowned and ran off as Clint struggled to his feet, trying to avoid jostling his ribs. Clint shot an arrow at his retreating back and was impressed when the kid plucked it out of the air. The kid waved it at him before tossing it to the side as he raced off again. Clint watched avidly as the arrow landed in the bunker that had shot at him before it exploded.

There were other variables in this fight now. They had an enhanced in the field and it seemed his loyalty was unknown. He acted hostile at first but he saved Clint and then took out one of the guards' bunkers.

-Line Break-

Pietro zig-zagged his way through the Avengers, watching them fight. Suddenly he was jolted out of stride. He had bumped into the Captain. Pietro got lost for a few brief seconds in the Captain's jumbled mind. _Cold._ The Captain was afraid of the cold. The Soldier flashed in his mind and then a strange, happy version with short hair. Pain. _Who the hell is Bucky?_ Heartbreak. _Hate._ An odd symbol, like a skull with six octopus-like arms. _Loneliness. A man out of time_. Pietro paused slightly and watched the Captain with wide eyes filled with an unknown emotion. He rushed off again, his mind filled with turmoil.

-Line Break-

Steve was surprised when he was knocked to the ground. A boy, the one who had hit him, stood oddly sprawled before him, panting slightly as if had been running. He was maybe 20 years old with odd bleached blond hair and his blue eyes were so wide and scared. The boy's skin was pale as if he hadn't been out doors in a long time and Steve could see a multitude of silvery scars on his body. What was he doing out here, on a battlefield? Why, before, had he only been a silvery blue blur on the field? Steve was even more shocked when images and emotions that weren't his filtered in his mind.

Various experiments, tests and tortures, he experienced them all first firsthand. It was sickening and terrifying. Had this boy been through those things? Was Stucker doing human experimentation? Then a girl with long cinnamon brown hair and eyes that flashed an odd scarlet color. She was accompanied by feelings of loneliness and confusion. _Who was she?_ And lastly Steve saw Bucky, or the Winter Soldier he guessed. Watching him as he was strapped down into a char that cracked with electricity. Fear and overwhelming pain. And then he felt empty, _lost._

Steve felt strangely hollow as he watched the boy speed off using his enhancement. Left echoing in his mind was a feeling of desolation and a single thought. _Help me_.

"We have an enhanced in the field," Steve informed the team almost sadly.

-Line Break-

Pietro was confused and distressed as he watched somewhat curiously as the Captain confronted Strucker. He had experienced so many emotions today. It was strange for Pietro. When he was noticed and Strucker's mind became hopeful, Pietro pushed the Captain down a flight of stairs with the red energy. Before racing away, he pinned the Captain with a pleading gaze. Pietro ran, slamming the doors behind him with his power and leaving Strucker to his fate. He could feel Stark deeper in the fortress.


End file.
